


Bim Bam Q

by PeachGO3



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: 1920s Aesthetics, Fluff and Crack, Hands, Love Confessions, Other, Picard being oblivious af, musical numbers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22022512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachGO3/pseuds/PeachGO3
Summary: Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard is man of art, literature and poetry, of philosophical debates and grand speeches – but today, all he can hear are nonsense words and music boxes. Inspired by “Bim Bam toi”.
Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
Comments: 8
Kudos: 55





	Bim Bam Q

**Author's Note:**

> I recently came across “Bim Bam toi” by French singer Carla and thought, hell, why not. That song is the absolute worst, it is _villainous_ , but it’s so catchy and fun and French at the same time, and I love it – and it sounds like something Q would use to annoy Picard with lol.
> 
> These two are _very_ fun to write. I hope you enjoy ♡

Guinan’s attentive eyes look into the dark depths of space with such distrust that Jean-Luc is almost afraid to ask what it is that’s bothering her. She turns her head to study him next.

Clearing his throat, he smiles, “Something wrong with my face?”

She clenches her jaw, unimpressed. “No.”

Jean-Luc nods. Damn, she can be scary sometimes. “But you do look like something is troubling you, all of a sudden. Is there something you want to tell me?” he asks cautiously and sips his tea.

Guinan shakes her head and her features slightly soften. “I guess not,” she sighs with a smile. “If I find something out of the ordinary, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you,” Jean-Luc says and excuses himself. If all of his visits in Ten Forward would be this weird, he’d better not come again. Ready to resume his duty on the bridge, he walks towards the turbolift that beeps with a suspicious ‘bim’. Jean-Luc stops, but then the doors open normally. He looks around, but no other passing crewmember seems to have noticed.

But something isn’t right with the lift, because when the doors swish open on Deck 12, they make a sound that sounds less like the usual ‘swoosh’ and more like a ‘shht’. Jean-Luc flinches slightly. “Is it shushing us?” he half-amusedly asks the boarding crewmember, who raises her eyebrows in surprise.

“Pardon, sir, but how do you mean?”

Jean-Luc blinks, already regretting he pointed out something so trivial. “The sound,” he says politely. “That wasn’t the usual one.”

“I did not hear anything out of the ordinary,” she answers respectfully.

Jean-Luc presses his lips shut with a polite smile and says, “Bridge.” Good lord, are his ears getting worse? It’s probably nothing.

But Jean-Luc hears another sound when the lifts’ doors open to the bridge. Like a ‘vroom’. “This is getting ridiculous,” he sighs and tells a confused looking Lieutenant LaForge to check the lift. “Is something wrong, sir?” the engineer asks, and Jean-Luc tells him about the sounds. LaForge promises to take a look at it and leaves for Engineering.

Jean-Luc sighs and turns around, only to find Counselor Troi looking him happily. “Feeling good, Captain?” she asks.

“Always,” Jean-Luc says, not exactly knowing what she means, and sits down in the captain’s chair. “Coordinates laid in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Warp three, Ensign. Engage.”

“ _Bla bla_.”

Jean-Luc blinks. “I beg your pardon?” he asks, tensing up. “Ensign!” With a ducked head, Wesley Crusher turns around in his chair to face him. Breathing steadily, Jean-Luc waits for an apology.

“Sorry?” Wesley asks quietly.

“Oh, I see,” Jean-Luc says, “you want to make it look as though you did not say anything, right?”

Next to the boy, Data frowns. “But he did not say anything, sir,” he says.

Following that, Jean-Luc’s mouth opens and closes far too often. He clears his throat and excuses himself to leave for his ready room.

* * *

Guinan can feel his presence so clearly it’s driving her insane. He’s close, somewhere near, but where? She can’t pin-point his essence, which is worrisome, because usually she always can once he’s near enough. It’s not like he even _tries_ to hide.

He seems to be too fixated on Picard to do that.

The audacity! It’s this very smugness that makes Guinan want to thrash him all over again. Should she tell the captain? Or would that cause evitable trouble? Pondering, she stares outside.

* * *

As soon as Jean-Luc is alone, doors having swished close with a ‘psht’, he feels a warmth boiling in his chest that is undoubtably born out of shame and anger alike. What is going on? Rubbing his face, he steps to the replicator orders a cup of Earl Grey. Instead, the computer gives him… a liqueur glass?

“What the hell,” Jean-Luc sighs. And now there’s a melody playing, from those music boxes they tell you to listen to when you’re wrought up. Jean-Luc orders the computer to stop the music, but of course it tells him that there is no music playing, and that should have been obvious by now. There’s a pattern here, Jean-Luc thinks and reaches out to let his hand ghost through the glass illusion, only it is no illusion, and he smashes the small glass with his flat hand, liqueur pouring down the replicator.

Fantastic. And now his head throbs with a ‘bim’ and ‘bam’ and ‘boom’, and the monotone music grows louder and richer.

“Merde,” he curses quietly and shakes his hand. Just in this moment, his communicator beeps, adding to the tohubohu.

“Ten Forward to Captain Picard.”

Jean-Luc sighs. “Yes, Guinan, go ahead,” he says, but just then the room’s lights go out with the same strange sounds that had infiltrated the turbolift earlier.

“But it’s such fun right now, we can’t let that happen,” a female voice says. It is not Guinan’s, and Jean-Luc frantically tries to catalogue it, but he doesn’t know who it belongs to at all.

“Who is this?” he calls firmly, but now even the stars outside _go out_ with a loud snap of fingers. It’s pitch-black, Jean-Luc can’t see anything. The music morphs into something more throbbing, pulsating. “Number One?” Jean-Luc calls, but his communicator shushes him coyly. Right.

Holding out his hands clumsily, Jean-Luc stumbles through his room, to the direction where the doors must be, and stumbles right into a party set.

Wait, what?

“Bim, bam, boom!”

The music is louder now, guitars and vocals support a swing band on a balcony hovering over a giant water fountain. It’s a hall of white marble and golden glitter, full of people in black tuxedos, short dresses and feathery accessories. Everyone is drinking and dancing, the floor is laced with golden confetti stripes. And… Jean-Luc, too, is wearing a tuxedo himself, as though someone had decided to throw a vaguely nineteen-twenties house party.

 _Ça fait bim, bam, quoi?  
_ _I love you, je crois que c’est ça_

So, it’s a French song? All right, enough of this. Jean-Luc opens his mouth to protest, or make the computer terminate the simulation, but then a decorated glass is pushed into his hands and his body gets sucked into the dancing crowd. He wants to scream, but somehow he lacks the words. Indeed, there is something intoxicating about the situation – when was the last time he was on a party like this? The atmosphere is fun and carefree; the dance moves are somewhat grotesque, but joyful enough to have a certain charme.

The golden lights dim as the music slows down and the vocalist sings a heartfelt bridge to build up to the next big splash, and just listening to someone sing in French makes Jean-Luc smile, somehow.

 _Il m’en faudrait du courage  
_ _Pour affronter tes yeux_

The dancing has stopped as everyone stares at the vocalist in fascination. Her hands ghost over the round microphone as she sings and fixates Jean-Luc with dark eyes. He swallows. She’s so far away, yet her intense gaze makes him shiver in awe. Like a cat, she moves around the microphone stand and descends the marble stairs, continuing to sing to Jean-Luc. Her sparkling black dress is enchanting.

 _Mais est-on jamais sage  
_ _Quand on est amoureux?_

Indeed, one is seldomly wise when in love, Jean-Luc thinks and smiles into his glass. He could just as well play along, couldn’t he? Maybe this is an alien lifeform trying to make contact.

Jean-Luc slightly moves his feet to the beat when the music starts building up again. The other party guests have formed a lane, like a guard of honour, just not with phasers, but with large fans of glittering feathers, leading right towards Jean-Luc. He adjusts his posture and hands his glass to the next best person to be ready to take her hands when she would reach out for him.

 _Ça fait bim, bam, boum  
_ _Dans ma tête, y’a tout qui tourne_

The lyrics aren’t very elaborate, Jean-Luc thinks with amusement, but they perfectly capture the excitement and confusion that come with falling in love. For teenagers, at least, not grown men. But it’s charming, like feeling young again. Whatever lifeform, they sure know how to have fun. Smiling, Jean-Luc braces himself to dance with the singer walking towards him behind raising feathers, putting on his most charming smile.

 _Ça fait bim, bam_ – there’s a familar laughing voice –  
_Dans mon cœur, je comprends pas_

Jean-Luc feels his eyes widen, and his chest tightens with shock as Q grimaces right in front of his face – it takes Jean-Luc a few seconds to realize the beautiful singer has just been a façade to lure him in.

“You,” he blurts out as the alien bends him over in a dip.

“Bonjour, mon capitane,” Q grins and pulls him up again to continue the Charleston or whatever this atrocity was. The crowd is cheering and dancing around them, lights flashing and hands waving.

Q is _beaming_ at Jean-Luc. “I love you, I think that’s it!” he sings along to the music as it ends with a bang and a firework behind them, over the seaside veranda.

Everyone cheers and demands the next song, which the swing band happily provides, but Q just smiles at Jean-Luc, breathing heavily from the frantic dancing. Jean-Luc glares back.

“What’s this all about?” he demands harshly, but Q shushes him playfully and guides him outside. “You don’t want to scream in front of our guests, do you, mon chou?” he asks mischievously, and Jean-Luc cringes at the pet name. Q knows exactly which buttons to press.

He lets himself be guided past giant glass doors into the cold night, where even more guests in even crazier costumes stare into the starry sky and the fireworks that illuminate it, mirrored in the sea. There are stairs on the left side that lead into a lush garden, dark and green with trees and bushes full of flowers. Q leads him there.

“I know you should be in bed by now, but it’s too much of a wonderful summer night, isn’t it?” Q muses. He picks a flower to tuck next to his pocket square. With a clenched jaw, Jean-Luc mentally admits that it’s one of his better dress-ups.

“I thought you liked the Great Gatsby?” Q asks innocently.

“I demand to be returned to my ship,” Jean-Luc replies vicelike.

Q flails. “Come on!” he calls, sounding like a child that does not want to go home yet.

Jean-Luc softens slightly. “I could say the same, come on. What’s this all about?”

“Alcohol, excess, moonlight, a French love song – isn’t it obvious?” Q asks with a frown and steps closer. “We danced together. You let me spin you around,” he whispers. Jean-Luc avoids his intense star fire gaze. It’s not like he is not familiar with it by now, far from it, but right now it seems stronger than ever, as if Q is having trouble keeping his nature alien nature from leaking out of his fake human body. Though it seems to unsettle Q himself even further, Jean-Luc somewhen lifts his gaze to stare back. He hisses, “You have made a fool of me in front of my crew-”

“Yeah, _right_ , entirely my fault,” is the sarcastic interruption.

“- and worried Guinan to no end. What are you up to?”

Q’s shoulder slope down at the sound of that name. “Her again?” he asks with annoyance – but without fear, Jean-Luc notices – “She’s a pain in the nose, I tell you. No matter what I do, she’s onto me like I’m some intergalactic criminal.”

Jean-Luc quirks his eyebrows at him. “You are. You are also a liar, misanthropic, audacious and without any empathy, so you can hardly blame her for being suspicious.” He pauses briefly. “It _was_ a nice party, though. You spoiled it with your sorry visage,” he adds benevolently.

Q pretends to be shocked. “What did I do to you to deserve such a personal insult?” he asks. There is something so familiar about his tone that Jean-Luc actually relaxes as he says, “You lured me in with a female vocalist in a short black dress. That’s low, even for you.”

“Lured you in,” Q repeats sarcastically and makes a disbelieving sound. He starts walking around the garden, casting a light shadow from the golden shine from above. What is he planning? What is the scheme this time around? Why does he avoid answering this much, and why the semi-romantic location? Jean-Luc’s eyes flutter. “What do you want?” he inquires, softer this time.

Q pretends he hasn’t heard him and turns around, prompting him to repeat with a questioning hum and a fumbling of his hands.

Jean-Luc frowns. If he wouldn’t know the entity better, he’d say Q was behaving insecure.

“I wondered what you’d want from me this time,” he says slowly, following Q deeper into the garden. The grassy path seems endless, complete with flowers and small marble statues of angels.

“I sang my reasons to you, didn’t I?” Q says without looking at him. They now walk side by side, leaving the music and party behind once and for all. Jean-Luc notices Q is still fumbling with his hands ere he looks up to say, “You look fine in a tux, Jean-Luc. I mean it. Better than in those space pyjamas anyway.”

“Answer my question, explain yourself,” Jean-Luc prompts. “You are capable of grand words, Q, you know that, yet you sang gibberish.”

“Why, darling, that’s no way to talk about the French language,” Q scolds, holding onto a thin string of sarcasm and mockery, probably to distract himself from the compliment that proceeded the accusation, which wasn’t like him at all. Jean-Luc sighs. “Bim, bam, boom?” he recalls. “Really?”

“It wasn’t just about making up words, you really should have noticed that,” Q defends himself.

Remembering the love lyrics with awful clarity, Lean-Luc stops walking to glare at Q. “Ah, now I see,” he says, adapting Q’s sarcasm. “It was also about ridiculing me.”

Q turns around with such a genuinely shocked and vulnerable expression across his features that Jean-Luc falls completely silent. “Ridicule you?” Q asks quietly, wide eyes searching contact. He looks as if Jean-Luc had caught him off-guard, unprepared.

Jean-Luc collects himself. “Yes,” he says firmly and quotes, “ _But is one ever wise when in love?_ You took a perfectly sweet song and made it a villainous grotesque by directing it towards me.”

“So that’s what we call it now, heh? A ‘villainous grotesque’?” Q snaps, and he sounds genuinely hurt. Every sound stops, the whispering of the trees, the faint music, the fireworks. Time froze.

“I don’t understand,” Jean-Luc utters, anxious to have angered the entity.

“You never do!” Q complains. “I unburden my heart to you, and that’s how you plan on escaping it. By saying you wouldn’t understand, despite me trying to convey it to you as simply and humanly as possible.” His voice shakes a little when he adds, “It’s a plain and simple truth, I swear, from the bottom of my poor heart. God, you’re so… simple-minded!”

Jean-Luc doesn’t even hear the insult, he’s too busy processing the sentence that proceeded it. “How should I take it then?” he asks quietly, realisation slowly dawning. Dear Lord.

Q presses his lips together and nervously shakes his fists in a tired gesture of frustration. “I’ve really tried, you know?” he asks.

“I know,” Jean-Luc says truthfully.

“You don’t deserve this,” Q snaps, rushing towards him with assertive steps, but Jean-Luc is rooted to the spot. Q’s fake nostrils move heavily, perfect human imitation. “You deserve this annoying song and nothing more, you stupid, oblivious human,” he says with firm eyes. He’s strained.

Jean-Luc softens, getting lost in their closeness and all the power beams that now hit him up close. The only time he’s ever felt like this was when the Enterprise had stopped next to a pulsar. “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he says with fluttering eyes, but a firm voice.

So, this is what it is?

Q bites his bottom lip, backing off a little, but without breaking eye contact. Something invisible seems to hit his head. He laughs briefly, and then, slowly, he softens. “She’s interrupting,” he says with disappointed smile. “Your _bartender_ – she doesn’t care about privacy. She’s trying to chase me away. Tears at my hair like a preschooler. And even you can’t stop her. And I don’t want to. Mood’s ruined.”

Jean-Luc inhales sharply as he realises how much these words sadden him. He desperately wants Q to stay and talk this out. In love? That… can’t be.

As if he read his thoughts, Q turns his head to fixate him yet again. “C’mon, Jean-Luc,” he says softly, but not without charge, “of course it’s not ‘love’. A being like me is incapable of that. I feel something different, I just tried to put it into words you’d understand.”

“What difference does it make?” Jean-Luc smiles.

Q swallows, saying, “So, you get it now? An omnipotent entity can dream, can’t it?” He sighs, taking Jean-Luc’s hand in his own to run a gentle thumb over the human skin. “Fingertips sure are amazing,” he says. “Two-thousand five-hundred nerve endings in one fingertip. More than anywhere else in the human body. As far as I’m concerned, only Vulcan fingers are more sensitive to touch.”

As he talks, Q turns Jean-Luc’s hand around, inspecting every centimetre. For fake fingers, his are very soft and warm, even though there is something alien, something magnetic about them.

“Fascinated, are we?” Jean-Luc teases, still not allowing himself to indulge in this apparent reality. Q is a notorious liar, there had to be a catch.

“The others in the Continuum can’t understand human hands,” Q says with raised eyebrows. “Hands irritate them. I’ve gotten used to them by now – I’d even say, yes, that there is a certain fascination about them.” He gently squeezes Jean-Luc’s hands, and it’s a wonderful touch, an alien touch – he’d never thought he’d ever see this side of Q. Come to think of it, he had never even considered this side of him. It’s weirdly endearing and somewhat befuddling.

But Guinan keeps distracting Q. “This is such a pity,” he whispers, smiling to the ground. “But I can’t do much against her right now.”

“Then maybe another time?” Jean-Luc hears himself ask. He can’t believe he’s saying this. To Q. _Abort_.

Q laughs at that. “Splendid! Let’s see how we can pass the time of loneliness and stay connected… Ah, yes. It may be irritating at first, but you will find it apt – as I have for some time now, believe me,” he smiles.

Jean-Luc returns it cautiously. “What does ‘some time’ mean to someone eluding the very concept of time?” he asks, pulling a chuckle from Q as the alien squeezes his hand, saying, “It will annoy you, the shining knight of art and literature, ‘til the day I return to you.”

“What will annoy me?” Jean-Luc asks absently, fascinated by the ongoing caress. It’s like being touched by stardust.

Their eyes finally meet, and once they’re locked, they seem inseparable. He knows it’s foolish but Jean-Luc feels very, very small all of a sudden. Eyes shining with cosmos colours, Q smiles down at him, and for the first time since their encounter at Far Point, it does not look tongue-in-cheek, but genuine and sincere. Q leans in a bit, hesitant, ere going in all the way. Pulsating. “This will,” he whispers against parted lips – and then, in the blink of an eye, Jean-Luc is back in his ready room, in uniform, but he quickly collapses under the brass music and nonsense lyrics roaring in his head. He can hear Guinan entering the room, but little else. He also still feels Q’s touch on his hands, pulsating and teasing, but undoubtably affectionate. Breath on his lips that anticipated… Well, what did he think was going to happen?

He aches to learn. Knowing what being caressed by a Q, _his_ Q, just what would being kissed by him feel like? Curios longing consumes every bit of Jean-Luc’s body, and it tingles in his every limb.

“Captain, are you all right? He’s gone now,” Guinan says softly, offering him a hand to get up from the floor.

Jean-Luc pants as he takes it and reorientates. Compared to this music, the ‘psht’ sounds from earlier don’t seem half as bad. He frowns when the stars light up behind the window glass, forming fireworks, because he finds he can hardly wait to see the real ones again. Oh, what has he gotten himself into?

He actually feels confused, heart racing. Like a bloody teenager. Giving smug Q gratification by reciprocating. Oh, goddammit.

 _And it grows, it grows, it grows  
_ _Right until my little heart freaks out_

 _It goes “shh” and then “bla bla”  
_ _It goes “comme-ci, comme-ça”_  
_It goes “bim, bam, hahaha”  
_ _In my heart, I don’t understand_


End file.
